


radioactive

by dragonbagel



Series: peter and mj, sittin in a tree [5]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flash Thompson Redemption, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Violence, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Protective Michelle Jones, Protective Peter Parker, Trans Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22447906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonbagel/pseuds/dragonbagel
Summary: “For the love of—I just need some information, okay? Give it to me, and you and your little friends are free to leave.”Somehow, Peter doesn’t think it’s going to be that easy.“Okay, what do you wanna know? We’re learning about redox reactions in chemistry, if you’re interested.” Oops, there goes his mouth again. “We also learned about psychopaths last month in psych class—you know, like people who kidnap kids? I can give you a refresher if you want.”or: peter, mj and flash are kidnapped. peter wants his life to be less cursed, mj wants to keep her idiot boyfriend alive, and flash just wants to know what the hell is going on
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Flash Thompson, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Flash Thompson
Series: peter and mj, sittin in a tree [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423327
Comments: 69
Kudos: 548





	1. waking up to ash and dust

**Author's Note:**

> me? starting a new fic despite being terrible at updating consistently? it’s more likely than you think
> 
> tw for vomiting and threats of sexual assault, which WILL NOT happen in this fic. if this is triggering, stop at the line “Peter freezes and attempts to school his expression.”

Peter wakes up to a warm hand on his shoulder and the slimy stench of mildew crawling down his throat. 

“Peter.”

He groans at the sound of MJ’s voice, refusing to open his eyes as he clings to the remnants of sleep. 

“Five more minutes,” he mumbles, leaning further into her touch.

“Peter.”

The hand is shaking him now, making his head flop uncomfortably. 

“‘m tired,” is his elegant reply.

Although he definitely doesn’t have the brain power to explain it at the moment, he’s also desperate to escape from the nasty smell permeating wherever the hell he’d chosen to take a nap. And besides, wasn’t MJ the one who was always lecturing him about needing to get more sleep?

“Hey, Penis, wake the fuck up!”

Peter stiffens, any traces of exhaustion immediately erased. It was like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over his head—an apt metaphor, considering that with his consciousness came an acute awareness of the shivers wracking his body.

Because while he could understand sleeping near MJ—in fact, it was one of his favorite pastimes—he would never, _ever_ sleep in front of Flash.

He blinks his eyes open slowly, attempting to adjust to a bright overhead light. His head throbs in time with his heartbeat, and black spots danced in and out of his vision. There was a pretty high chance he was concussed, and probably an even higher chance that he’d been hit with a car multiple times. His entire body aches, inhales burning his bruised insides with the rancid stench of mold.

He coughs and shuts his eyes again, attempting to draw small breaths through his mouth. God, this place _reeked._ There’s no way even a non-enhanced person wouldn’t be gagging over the slimy humidity crawling through the air and down his throat and into his insides and—

He barely manages to lean to the side to avoid retching onto his bare feet.

Gasping, Peter falls to his knees, the chill of the damp bricks cutting down to the bone. He probably would’ve toppled onto his face—and into the remnants of his lunch—had it not been for a sharp tug holding his wrists behind his back. Shackles. Great. 

He attempts to crane his neck over his shoulder and see what the hell was going on with the whole restraint situation, groaning as the motion aggravated his nausea. He manages to catch a glimpse of shackles attached to what looked like some weird metal pole before his eyes crossed and he was forced to turn around before he puked on himself. Again.

Gritting his teeth, he begins to tug at the chain tethering his wrists together. Then he freezes, because the chain doesn’t snap in half after one, two, three pulls. It doesn’t even budge.

 _Vibranium,_ his mind weakly supplies. _Fuck._

Dimly, he can hear the sounds of an argument. His senses are all out of whack, so he has essentially no concept of where the conversation was occurring a foot or a mile away.

“—the fuck is going on? When my father hears about this—“

“Shut the fuck up, Flash!” 

That’s definitely MJ’s voice, fierce and unwavering. At least that meant he wasn’t stuck involuntarily eavesdropping on some random marital spat in the next borough.

“So what, you’re okay with this?”

“I never said that,” MJ hisses.

“Yeah, well, _someone_ needs to think of a plan, because if Penis pukes again I’m—“

“S-shut up.”

Peter doesn’t know how he managed to force out the words over the bile clinging to his throat, the migraine developing behind his temples. All he knows is that it’s too bright and too loud and if Flash says something else in his obnoxiously loud voice he’s going to lose it.

“What was that, dickwad?”

Peter groans, trying in vain to bring his hands up to shield his ears. He watches as MJ’s eyes flick over him, pausing on the clenching of his fists and his undoubtedly tense muscles.

“Eleven?” She asks, voice incredibly soft. It flits over Peter’s ears like velvet.

He nods, closing his eyes. He can’t help but overhear MJ snapping at Flash to keep his voice down.

“I’m so rry, but in case you didn’t notice, we’ve just been fucking _kidnapped_ , so I’ll talk as loud as I damn please, thank you very—“

Peter holds up a hand at the sudden feeling of goosebumps on the back of his neck, the tiny voice screaming _danger_ in his head now much more vocal in its contribution to what’s quickly becoming the mother of all migraines. “Someone’s coming.”

Flash rolls his eyes so hard Peter’s surprised they don’t pop right out of his head. “What, are you hearing things now? Got some sort of ESP? Or are you just schizo?”

The way Flash’s face pales at the sound of a lock opening would’ve been hilarious if Peter’s head wasn’t on the verge of splitting open. As it is, he manages to shoot a poor attempt at a reassuring smile towards MJ, who has backed up to stand next to him against the wall. He notices, belatedly, that neither she nor Flash are restrained. While he appreciates that she won’t have to deal with the chafing that inevitably comes with being cuffed (God, why does he know this shit?), a dark feeling begins to settle in the pit of his stomach.

The door slams open with a bang, and Peter feels like he’s been hit over the head with a frying pan. Like he’s a cartoon character, except instead of seeing pretty stars he sees a vast expanse of terrifying nothingness where he leaves MJ to deal with this clusterfuck on her own and he cannot, _will not_ do that to her. (Or, he guesses, to Flash, because Spider-Man has a responsibility, yadda yadda yadda. Honestly, the asshole should be happy he’s even an afterthought.)

“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.”

The man leaning in the doorway is large, shoulders broad and nearly bursting from underneath a tattered jacket. A hat sits low on his head, the brim obscuring most of his eyes. Peter straightens from where he’s half leaning his weight on his shackles, much to the protest of his already sore wrists. He may not be Spider-Man right now—a fact which his thrifted science pun t-shirt sorely attests to—but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a job to protect the people he loves (and those he’s unfortunately forced to tolerate).

So he does what he does best: he opens his mouth.

“Does that make you the cat, then?”

The man turns to face Peter, eyebrow raised. 

“Cat-Man? Is that name taken? Like a cross of Batman and Cat-Woman, but with way worse hygiene. I mean, come on, you smell almost as bad as the mold here. Speaking of which, I feel like this building isn’t up to code, maybe you should—“

“Enough!” The man—whom Peter has now effectively dubbed Cat-Man—cuts off his rambling, giving Peter a chance to take the breath he’d been missing for a solid thirty seconds. “Jesus, they said you were annoying, but…”

Peter forces his features to perk up. “Ooh, do I have a fan club?”

He feels MJ elbow him lightly, and he bites his lip. She doesn’t have to say her message for him to get it: shut up and stop making this worse.

Too little, too late; Peter can sense the slap coming before Cat-Man has even reared his hand back, and he forces himself to stand still as the slap cracks against his cheek. It’s honestly pretty tame, as far as Spider-Man standards go. He feels a slight sting from where a ring had cut into his skin, but it’s nothing that a solid ten minutes won’t heal.

On second thought, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. It’s enough to make him bite back a comment about how shocked he is that Cat-Man is married.

Well, that and the pained look on MJ’s face.

“You done now?”

Peter moves his jaw back and forth, trying to regain feeling in his muscles. Cat-Man, luckily, takes that as a yes.

“Well, now that you’re finally quiet, are you ready to answer some questions?”

Peter stares at him silently for a moment, blinking, before widening his eyes in feigned innocence. “Wait, am I allowed to talk again now?”

“For the love of—I just need some information, okay? Give it to me, and you and your little friends are free to leave.”

Somehow, Peter doesn’t think it’s going to be that easy.

“Okay, what do you wanna know? We’re learning about redox reactions in chemistry, if you’re interested.” Oops, there goes his mouth again. “We also learned about psychopaths last month in psych class—you know, like people who kidnap kids? I can give you a refresher if you want.”

“What I _want_ ,” Cat-Man says through gritted teeth, “is information on Stark Tower.”

Peter forces his expression to remain neutral, but internally he’s screaming his head off. Part of him hopes that the “internship” is the reason for their current predicament, but that doesn’t explain why he’s the only one tied up. Maybe, if he plays his cards right…

“Why the hell would Parker have info on Stark Tower?” Leave it to Flash to make any semblance of a plan go up in flames.

When Cat-Man’s eyes, still mostly hidden in the shadow of his cap, meet Peter’s, he swears they’re sparkling with the interest of a predator in its prey.

“Well, young Mr. Parker here has an _internship_ there, isn’t that right?” The way he emphasizes “internship” nearly makes Peter gag. God, he’s so fucked.

Flash scoffs. “You’re joking, right? There’s no way this loser actually works for Tony Stark.”

An idea pops into Peter’s head. A stupid, shameful idea that just might work. “I hate to say it but...he’s right. I’ve…I’ve been making it up. I thought it’d make me seem cooler, y’know?”

He could see MJ keeping her expression purposefully neutral, but he didn’t miss the way her fist clenched at her side at Flash’s cheer of, “I knew it!”

Unfortunately, Cat-Man isn’t so easily swayed. “You really need to work on your lying...Spider-Man.”

Cat-Man brings forward a bag that he’d been holding behind his back, out of sight and out of mind. It’s yellow, adorned with a few pins that MJ had begrudgingly given him after he lost his similarly decorated one a few weeks ago on a mad dash to stop a car thief. It’s unmistakably Peter’s bag and, even worse, when Cat-Man unzips it and flips it upside down, it’s unmistakably the iconic red and blue Spider-Man suit that spills out onto the ground.

Peter’s blood freezes. He can feel three sets of eyes on him, burrowing into him and stealing the air from his lungs. “That’s not...mine? He’s just a friend, I help him out, y’know?”

Even he knows the lie sounds shaky at best. He barely has time to mentally berate himself before his danger sense explodes and he jumps upwards on instinct, narrowly missing a bullet that lodged itself into the wall behind where his left shin had been just seconds ago.

As he catches his breath, panting, he notices two equally damning things: first, he dodged a bullet that no normal human would’ve been able to evade. 

And second, he was currently sticking perpendicular to the slimy bricks behind the pole with nothing but the bottoms of his feet...eight feet off the ground.

He hears MJ sigh below him, hears Flash gasping like a fish out of water and Cat-Man cackling like he’s just won the lottery.

Resigned, he drops from the wall, bare feet—ew, where were his shoes?—touching down lightly. He hears the faint pitter-patter of something dripping, and idly wonders if the ceiling of this shithole is leaking; he wouldn’t be surprised. A glance downward shows that no, it’s actually blood, and wow, he doesn’t remember the handcuffs cutting that much into his wrist but, as MJ frequently points out, he’s not the most observant. Plus, it definitely checks out that leaping into the air as far as the chains would let him may possibly cause some extreme chafing. And maybe a sprained wrist, now that he thinks about it.

“You ready to ‘fess up now?”

Peter sighs. “Alright, you got me. Want a pat on the back? You’ll have to untie me first, though.” He pulls on the chains, which still won’t budge, and winks.

Peter can’t help but feel some satisfaction at the huff of annoyance that Cat-Man lets out. The other man must sense his smugness, because he takes a step closer to MJ. Peter freezes and attempts to school his expression.

“Aw, is this your little girlfriend?”

If the contents of his stomach weren’t already spilled out on the floor, Peter’s certain they would be now. His expression hardens, and he grits out a “no.” 

Even he knows the lie is see-through.

“Well, _Spider-Man,_ ” Cat-Man says, tone amused. “If you don’t behave, you won’t be the only one sticking your dick in this lovely lady.”

It’s as if all the air has been knocked out of Peter’s lungs. He can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe_ , and all he can think is _this is his fault_ . He can practically taste the tension in the air, radiating from MJ’s slightly trembling body and Flash’s equally frozen form. The part of his brain that’s trapped itself away behind walls of steel, barricaded itself from the reality that was threatening to choke him from the inside out, wants to bite out that _jokes on him, Peter doesn’t even_ have _a dick._

Instead, he manages to say, voice cracking worse than when he’d first started T, “Okay, I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Peter,” MJ hisses, but Peter doesn’t miss the slight sag of relief in her shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, meeting her eyes with a reassurance he didn’t know he possessed.

“Great,” Cat-Man says, clapping his hands together. A vicious grin splits across his face. “I’m going to let you off this pole now. Promise you’ll behave?”

Peter swallows thickly, nodding. He jolts slightly as the cuffs detach from the pole before snapping his wrists together. Stupid vibranium.

A dull warning thrums at the back of his neck before Cat-Man places a hand on his shoulder, his grip firm and so unlike MJ’s. He pushes Peter forward, sending him stumbling out into the hallway.

“After you,” Cat-Man says, breath hot on Peter’s face.

Peter shoots one last glance at MJ over his shoulder before the door slams shut behind him.


	2. wipe my brow and sweat my rust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mj and flash have a chat. peter seems to think he can annoy his way out of any situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow sorry this took a hot minute, midterms fucking destroyed me lol
> 
> anyways this is angsty and slightly longer pls enjoy
> 
> (also theres some implied sexual content in this. like its referenced but nothing explicit actually occurs)

The silence is deafening.

MJ can still hear the echo of the door ringing inside her head, nearly overpowering the sound of her thudding heartbeat. She blinks slowly, feeling her hands shake of their own accord at her sides—which is weird, because she’s pretty sure she’s not even in her body right now.

Maybe this is just some sort of sleep paralysis nightmare. Maybe MJ will be forced awake by the sound of her alarm soon, or by Peter tapping on her window, or by a disgruntled teacher who isn’t paid enough to prevent her from napping during detention, or—

“What the actual _fuck_ just happened?”

Or anything other than the reality of being trapped in this dark, disgusting room with Resident Asshole Flash Thompson.

MJ grapples with the unresponsive muscles in her face, trying to rearrange her features into their typical composed glower. She wishes she could say it works.

“Hey, Jones, I’m talking to you!” Flash’s voice is hard now, and it hits her like a slap across the face; like the strike that Peter took to protect her, to protect _them._

“Yeah?” MJ replies, dropping her voice into its usual monotone. “Well, I’m not feeling too chatty right now.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break,” Flash snaps, taking a step closer to her. She forces herself to stand still. “If you didn’t notice, Penis just fucking _left us here_! I don’t know if this is some lame attempt to prove his obviously fake internship, but you’ve gotta wise up. We’re on the same side here!”

Logically, MJ knows Flash is just scared shitless. That he’s just trying to cope with a situation that is _so_ far out of both of their depths. But right now, MJ isn’t thinking logically, because not only has she also been _fucking kidnapped,_ but Peter is _gone._

“His _name_ ,” MJ grits out, “is Peter. And if you took your self-absorbed head out of your ass for one fucking minute, you’d see that he just gave himself up for us like a _fucking idiot_.”

When Flash doesn’t respond, MJ turns away with a groan. She busies herself with finding a relatively less gross spot on the ground to sit down on, leaning against the wall and running her hands through her unruly hair. _Stupid dumbass boys and their stupid dumbass egos._

A moment later, there’s a scuffling sound, and she turns to see Flash taking a seat next to her. Well, not next to her—more like nearby at a “no homo” distance. 

MJ can’t help but feel slightly amused, especially at Flash’s ridiculously exaggerated grimace as his designer pants touch the floor.

She watches as he purposely avoids her gaze, which isn’t really anything new. But something about this reaction doesn’t scream unease and intimidation, as is the result of her usual MO. If MJ didn't know better, she’d say it almost looks like shame.

Whatever. She has better things to over-analyze and make herself sick about.

She’s in the thick of running through her third nightmare scenario of what could be happening to Peter when Flash clears his throat. She hopes her eyes convey how unamused she is, especially since she’s just settled on which medieval torture instrument Cat-Man most likely has.

(It’s the Cat o’ Nine Tails, obviously, because it went with the theme. Plus, there’s no way this guy somehow managed to acquire the iron maiden that MJ may or may not have spent years scouring the internet for.)

“Can I help you with something?” she asks, voice tight.

Flash startles, as if he hadn’t been the one to try to get her attention in the first place. MJ simply blinks at him.

“Oh,” he starts, glancing around as if only now processing that MJ’s question was aimed at him. “I was just wondering…”

He coughs into his fist, looking between MJ and the floor so fast that there’s no way he isn’t going cross-eyed. When he finally finds his voice, it’s quiet, barely above a murmur. “Parker...how long...when did he, y’know…”

“Freshman year.”

Flash flinches at the suddenness of MJ’s response, mouth still half-open.

“You were gonna ask when he became Spider-Man. Why?”

“I was just curious.” The nonchalant shrug Flash attempts fails spectacularly.

MJ narrows her eyes. “You started a Spider-Man fan club at our school. There’s no way you don’t know when he started.”

Flash opens and closes his mouth a few times, no words coming out. MJ almost wishes she had her sketchbook, because this is a next-level crisis right here.

“It’s...listen, I’m still not saying he’s definitely Spider-Man, because this could all just be some sort of mind-fuck—“ He cuts himself off at MJ’s glare. “But like, Spider-Man can dodge bullets, and fight super-villains, and _literally lift trucks_. So it just doesn’t make sense why he doesn’t…”

He trails off, but MJ easily connects the dots. “Why he doesn’t fight back?”

Flash gulps, nodding.

“Because he’s an idiot with a guilt complex,” MJ says, her chest tightening. “And he’s the best of all of us.”

 _Myself included_.

Flash is quiet after that, which MJ is perfectly fine with. Then he opens his mouth and there’s no chance of shutting him up. 

He’s reverted back to his usual pain-in-the-ass self, chattering just to hear himself speak. There’s no pretense of a conversation; Flash only pauses to breathe between absurdly lengthy sentences, and even then it’s only for a second.

She doesn’t quite know how much time passes, how long she sits and stares at the wall opposite her as Flash attempts to distract himself. She _does_ know that he cycles through over five theories of how this is a dream or his dealer had sold him some stepped-on shit. He also says the phrase “my father” over twenty times, which MJ only knows because if she doesn’t at least half-focus on his rambling she’ll lose her mind. (She’s still pretty close.)

Her semi-consciousness is thrown back into full, terrifying awareness at the sound of footsteps outside the door. Flash, miraculously, also shuts up, the quiet allowing the tail-end of a conversation to drift into the room.

“—and then I was like, ‘Man, you really need to work on branding, because the whole lizard thing is way too retro’—and not in a good way, believe me.”

Peter’s voice is getting louder, and MJ feels her hand twitch with the urge to slap him right over his big fat mouth. She hurriedly stands, grimacing as pins and needles shoot down her legs. She sees Flash follow suit out of the corner of her eye.

“He didn’t listen, which sucked, because I’m pretty good at giving advice. Did you know I once convinced Captain America to try on platform shoes? He said he hated them, but I’m pretty sure he still has them somewhere. Did I mention they’re bright yellow and—“

There’s the sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh, and Peter’s rambling stutters off into a pained grunt.

“Fuck, man, can’t you give a dude a break? We’ve been at this for hours, and I’ve gotta say, purple isn’t my best color. I’m more of a blue-and-red type kind of guy, y’know?”

MJ frowns at the obvious strain in Peter’s voice, itching for the godforsaken door to open already so that she can slip into Nurse MJ Mode rather than the current Worried Girlfriend thing she has going on.

“I guess we’ve already got some of the red—solid right hook, by the way—but—“

Then the door swings open, and MJ stops hearing anything at all. Because there, being manhandled by a set of angry-looking thugs, is Peter. She can see his mouth moving, see the way he’s deflecting and distracting and trying oh-so-desperately to keep the attention away from her. (And Flash, though at this point MJ feels like he deserves some roughing up.)

But she can also see the tension in his muscles, the slight tremble in his legs. The dried blood staining the skin above his swollen lips. The strange mix of fear and determination in his eyes as he talks to whom she now notices is the eloquently-dubbed Cat-Man behind him. 

His shirt must have been taken from him at some point, and MJ can’t help but train her eyes on his bare chest. Her brain feels like a scratchy DVD, pausing and skipping and short-circuiting as it tries to process the information before her.

It’s not that MJ hasn’t seen Peter topless before. In fact, it’s actually one of her favorite looks on him, in a “my-boyfriend-has-abs-of-steel-and-I’m-a-hormonal-teenager-what-do-you-expect” kind of way. (Unless his skin is exposed because he was an idiot and climbed through her window in the middle of the night to bleed all over her floor because he got himself injured and _could she pretty pretty please patch him up because Mr. Stark didn’t need to be bothered?_ Yeah, _way_ less fun than his other late-night visits.)

Unfortunately, this is not one of those times that leaves MJ’s knees weak with want. Instead, she feels an overwhelming sense of nausea tinged with panic at the sight before her.

Peter’s torso is fucking _covered_ in bruises, dark and prominent against his pale skin. Some have already started to lighten into a sickly greenish yellow, but it does nothing to stave the fear clenching in her chest.

He must sense her looking, because he shoots her a wink that makes her stupid heart flutter in a way that it definitely shouldn’t given the current clusterfuck of a situation they’re in.

Of course, her heart once again starts thundering in a far less mushy way when Peter’s arms are released and he’s shoved forwards into the room, stumbling and falling onto all fours in a graceless way that’s wholly at odds with the weird spider genes that let him flip away from bullets like it’s going out of style.

“You’ll behave?” 

MJ had honestly forgotten that there were other people in the room, such as the beefy guy currently nodding towards the restraints at the back wall.

“Oh, yeah,” Peter replies, slowly pushing himself up to stand. “You wouldn’t _believe_ the number of gold stars I’ve gotten for following directions.”

The man glowers at Peter, but eventually turns to leave. Goon Number Two and Cat-Man follow, though the latter pauses to look back at Peter one more time. “See you tomorrow, spider. Maybe think of something better to tell us, hmm?”

Peter gives him a thumbs up. “Don’t worry, I’ve already got some great stuff lined up for you. How familiar are you with Vine?”

The men huff (MJ’s pretty sure one of them starts praying under his breath) as they exit the room, and MJ can’t help but feel a bit smug at their obvious frustration. Being on the receiving end of her idiot boyfriend’s motor-mouth is never fun. (Unless he wasn’t using that mouth to talk, if you catch her drift.)

Said idiot is currently swaying on his feet, watching the retreating figures with a rapidly waning intensity. When the door finally closes, it’s as if the incredibly thin strings keeping him upright have been cut.

MJ barely manages to make it to his side before he face-plants on the ground, grabbing his bicep and lowering him down to sit in a way less dangerous fashion. He hisses at the contact and MJ frowns, letting go. He’s quick to wrap his arms around himself, and MJ isn’t sure if it’s an act of comfort or warmth.

Or, she realizes belatedly, an attempt to cover the twin scars still visible beneath the bruising on his chest.

“Here,” she says softly, shrugging off her sweater and holding it out to him. She then thanks god, wherever She is, for having the foresight to wear a tank top under her clothes, because she refuses to give Flash the satisfaction of seeing her in nothing but a bra.

Peter shakes his head. “You’ll be cold.”

“I’m fine. I’ve got another shirt on, see?”

He doesn’t seem convinced, so MJ tries again. “I can actually regulate my body temperature, remember? And I _cannot_ deal with you getting hypothermia again.”

“ _Again?”_

MJ barely manages to suppress a laugh at the pitch of Flash’s voice. Peter has to duck under MJ’s sweater, though MJ can still hear his chuckle before his head pops out of the top. (Wow, leave it to Flash to get Peter to actually listen to her.)

The sweater is big enough that it seems to fit comfortably over his broad shoulders, bunching only at the thick cuffs still encircling his wrists. Peter grins when he sees her staring, only to blush at the judgmental stare she levels towards the utter nightmare that is his hair.

He winces as he runs his fingers through it, as if the motion could somehow fix the bird’s nest of tangles and matting and _Jesus fuck is that blood_ atop his head. He freezes when he sees her looking, quickly dropping his hand and trying for a smile. It still looks like a grimace.

“Head injury?”

“Um...no?” 

MJ groans. At least it can’t be too awful if he’s still able to lie to her. 

“Look over here, dumbass.” Peter sighs, but complies. Thank god for small miracles.

She plows through the concussion tests that she unfortunately has memorized. (Seriously, what the actual fuck is her life?) By the end, Peter seems less like he’s going to keel over and more like his annoying, hyperactive self.

“MJ, come on, I told you I was fine! _Please_ don’t make me tell you about Cat-Man’s stupid costume ideas again.”

MJ purses her lips. “Fine. But I’m watching you, Parker.”

Peter gives her an exaggerated salute. “Sir, yes sir!”

MJ snorts and presses a quick kiss to his forehead. The skin is cold and clammy in a way that she doesn’t need first aid experience to know is bad.

Then Peter blushes, and she forgets about the situation at hand. At least, until Peter’s stomach growls.

“Shh,” he scolds, placing a hand over his abdomen.

“They didn’t feed you?”

Peter snorts. “Nah, too busy throwing punches. It was kinda boring, T-B-H.”

If Peter hadn’t already had the shit beat out of him, MJ swears she could smack him.

“They didn’t feed us either!” Flash pipes in, wholly unwarranted and unnecessarily.

Peter’s brows crease together, and MJ hurriedly intervenes before his brain is undoubtedly swallowed by his ridiculous self-sacrificing tendencies. “We’re fine.”

Flash scoffs. “Speak for yourself. I would _kill_ for something to eat right now.”

MJ watches with a ridiculous amount of anxiety as Peter groans and hauls himself to his feet.

“Hey!” he says, walking towards the center of the room and waving his arms wildly.

Shit. Maybe she needs to retry the concussion tests.

“Listen, I know this is your first kidnapping, but there’s some basic etiquette that you have to follow.”

MJ follows his gaze to see that no, he thankfully was not imagining shit. (She’s still recovering from the time he tore apart her entire room because he was convinced there was some sort of demonic animal hiding in it.) Instead, he’s staring pointedly at what looks like a small camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. She hates that she wouldn’t have noticed it on her own...which, now that she thinks about it, is probably the exact reason why Peter’s putting on this whole show.

“So, basically, food is a must. Like, come on, think logically here. How are we supposed to help you guys pull off your sick vendetta if we’re dying of hunger?”

MJ can’t help but smirk, while Flash seems incapable of closing his now-gaping mouth.

“And I hate to say it, but even HYDRA treated me better than this. Sure, they were a _little_ too into putting sharp objects where they didn’t belong—but at least I had a bed! Was it super lumpy and uncomfortable? Maybe. But it was definitely better than this whole ‘sleeping on the concrete floor’ schtick you’ve got going on.”

Peter has the tact to at least look slightly sheepish at the glare MJ levels him with, because _since when had he been kidnapped by fucking_ HYDRA?

“So yeah. Food. Beds. Water.” He counts on his fingers with each item he lists. “Oh, and some heat would be nice.”

Silence.

“Well.” Peter claps his hands together. “This has been fun. Good talk.”

Another awkward moment of quiet, and Peter turns back to MJ and Flash with a sigh and a shrug. “I tried.”

Flash groans. “We’re gonna starve to death in here.”

“Come on, it’s not _that_ bad,” Peter replies, only to be immediately betrayed by an obnoxiously loud growl from his stomach.

“You almost passed out the other day because you skipped breakfast,” MJ says, rolling her eyes at Peter’s offended expression.

Flash doesn’t seem to even process this, because his next words seem to come wholly out of left field. “What do they even want from us? Maybe we can, I dunno, trade info for food or something. That’s how this works, right?”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately, these idiots spend too much time on Reddit, because everything they’re asking about are just conspiracy theories. It’s kind of funny, actually.”

The moment of hesitation before Peter’s response is practically imperceptible. MJ knows she only noticed it because of their closeness, and, of course, her fantastic observation skills. She shoots him a skeptical look, and he at least as the decency to turn away in shame.

Flash, on the other hand, buys Peter’s bullshit immediately, and launches into a tangent about the Iron Man fan theories he’s read online and _does Peter know his favorite color because it’s a huge source of discourse._

Just as Peter begins to share Tony’s secret love of purple, MJ cuts him off. “You need to sleep.”

“What? Why? I’m fine.”

“First of all, you’re clearly not,” MJ snaps, only feeling slightly guilty as Peter flinches and refuses to meet her eyes. “And second, you know as well as I do that your weird healing shit works best while you sleep.”

Peter grumbles as Flash says “ _what?_ ” for the upteenth time. Eventually, he yields with a short “fine.”

“Great.” MJ, still seated, unfolds her legs from where they’re tucked against her chest and crosses them. “Now get over here.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but MJ can see the fondness in them as he approaches.

That fondness disappears when MJ, after faking a cough, whispers into her elbow, “And tell me what they really want.”

Peter, to his credit, only stills for a minute, and manages to keep his expression fairly neutral as he lowers himself onto the ground. He winces as he does so, but brushes MJ off when she offers to help.

Eventually, he manages to settle himself into a sort of fetal position with his head resting in her lap. She can feel him shivering against her, and moves to rub her hand on his shoulder to generate some heat before she remembers that, _oh yeah, he’s fucking_ covered _in bruises._

She still pokes him lightly, hating the way he winces but needing his attention. She shoots him a pointed look, one that says he’d better start talking ASAP.

Peter sighs, moving his head further into her lap and curling his hand around the back of her calf. Then, slowly, he begins to tap.

“So, I guess I’ll just...stay over here?” Flash’s disgruntled voice barely even registers, all of MJ’s brain power attuned to the series of dots and dashes being lightly pressed into her leg.

Peter repeats the pattern, repeats the six simple letters that MJ is eventually able to discern because she’s friends with a pair of fucking _dorks_ , and it takes all of her willpower not to react despite the way her brain is _screaming_ at her, the way that panic and bile are crawling up her throat.

Instead, she chokes out, “Yeah, I guess you will.”

She wants to say more, can feel a snarky comment on the tip of her tongue. But she doesn’t trust voice not to waver, and her lips feel numb. _She_ feels numb.

She notices distantly that Peter has stopped his tapping, instead rubbing his hand soothingly. She’s sure her heart rate is through the roof, and even though her head is too shrouded in panic to hear it, Peter undoubtedly can. She closes her eyes and leans her head back as if she’ll somehow be able to sleep.

She can still feel the echoes of his index finger, its astonishingly even pace. Dots and dashes repeating against her calf like phantom touches. Six letters, flashing behind her eyelids like a marquee advertising the worst possible movie. Like the screens in Times Square broadcasting a nightmare she just wants to wake up from.

M-O-R-G-A-N.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does this count as a cliffhanger
> 
> also wow we love some internal monologue and unoriginal titles


	3. breaking in, shaping up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter comes up with a half-baked escape plan. then the metaphorical easy-bake oven catches on fire and explodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an update? in this economy?
> 
> cw for transphobia in this chapter, specifics in end notes if you wanna skip (sorry im Projecting as usual)

Peter doesn’t remember falling asleep. He’s honestly amazed that he was even able to, considering the sheer amount of adrenaline that’s been pumping through his veins nonstop since he’d first woken up in this shithole.

Granted, he can tell he hasn’t been out for long. A peak under the hem of the shirt that he still feels guilty for taking shows that his bruises are only slightly more healed than before, and he can hear MJ’s breathing getting steadily deeper, like she’s only just slipped into unconsciousness.

Peter forces himself to stay still, even as hunger pains begin to spasm their way through his abdomen. The longer MJ’s asleep, the more time he has to figure out how to get them out of here. ( _Them,_ of course, also referring to Flash, who’s passed out a few feet away and snoring like a goddamn weed whacker.)

Closing his eyes, he strains his ears in search of something, _anything_ , that might give him a clue of how to stage his totally badass rescue mission. He can hear the slapping sound of playing cards a few rooms over, the dripping of a faucet not fully turned off. A pipe hums. A microwave dings. Someone plays Candy Crush with the volume way too loud. Flash continues to fucking snore.

Part of him (like, at least half) wants to wake the asshole up so that he has a semblance of a chance of hearing what’s going on outside. Of finding a clue, _any clue_ , about where the fuck they are.

Instead, he begrudgingly opens his eyes and begins to scan his surroundings. Camera in the corner? Check. Creepy pole with chains dangling from it? Present. Icky cement walls números uno, dos, tres y cuatro? Accounted for.

Man, what a depressing roll call. There isn’t even anything he can comically mispronounce for his own internal entertainment; Jordan Peele would be disappointed, no doubt. Like, un-bray-kah-blay door? Lame. Speed-air-man swit? Stupid. My-stair-ee-us puddle? Disgracef—

Speed-air-man swit. _Spider-Man suit._

He quickly sits up, blinking away the vertigo and black dots dancing in his vision. Then, as quietly as he can, he crawls towards his backpack, and the suit that he can see peeking out from underneath it.

The red fabric is buried under the mountain of random shit that he didn’t even know he carried around with him: Crumpled homework assignments, folders and notebooks practically disintegrating from overuse, the shatter remnants of his fourth cell phone that year, a weird assortment of slightly busted pens and blank notecards.

And then, beneath it all: The suit.

Carefully, he pulls it out from beneath the pile of junk, wrinkling his nose at the crumbs and pencil shavings now stuck to it. He glances up at Big Brother in the corner, but the camera doesn’t seem to have moved. Perfect.

Not-so-perfect? The fact that his suit had been more or less destroyed. He’s not sure how he missed all the shredding and tears yesterday—probably something to do with his constantly encroaching anxiety attack. 

The spider emblem on the chest has been cut in half in the style of someone preparing to horribly wrap a gift. His in-suit web shooters, which would be incredibly helpful considering his typical wristwear is currently trapped beneath unbreakable metal, look like someone took a hammer to them. A peak on the inside shows that yep, all the internal wiring—including the tracker that would be incredibly helpful right about now—is fucked, too. Mr. Stark is gonna kill him.

His mask, on the other hand...is also fucked, though slightly less so. The lenses are cracked, one almost completely shattered. Careful not to further break them, he turns the mask inside-out. Even without peeling back the layer of material covering the wiring, Peter knows he’s shit out of luck. The usual balance of the mask that comes with everything being in its place is slightly off, and even just slightly tearing the seam has a wire threatening to fall out.

Peter sighs. RIP Karen.

But he can fix her...can’t he? He’s hacked into the suit countless times, and even without his trusty Guy in the Chair, he should at least be able to rig something together. He just needs to get it back online, then he can send a message to Mr. Stark and—

A jolt runs up his spine just before his wrists snap together with a _clang_ that resonates throughout the room. Peter winces at the sound, as well as the fact that he’s once again incapacitated. _Stupid fucking vibranium._

Then, approximately a million times worse than the aftershocks of his super thrilling imprisonment, the sound of microphone feedback blares in. Peter can’t help but cry out, raising his cuffed hands in an attempt to cover his ears with his biceps. It’s no use; the sound is coming from everywhere and nowhere and his eardrums are splitting open along with his brain.

Finally, the noise stops, and Peter’s shoulders sag with relief. He doesn’t move his arms, though, because if that sound comes again and his ears are exposed he might actually die.

“Drop the suit.”

Peter realizes, dully, that he still has the mask clenched in his fist, now definitely even more fucked up than before. He forces his grip to relax, forces his jaw to unlock. Dammit, he should have been paying more attention to the camera.

Through the distorted sound waves slowly making their way into his brain, he can hear MJ and Flash beginning to stir. In an attempt to appear slightly more put-together, he drops his hands down from his ears. The sleeves of MJ’s lavender sweater—the one that her dearly departed grandma made for her, no less—now have a splash of scarlet. God, he’s the _worst._

The pain in his head flares at the sound of the door opening, heavy footsteps thudding into the room.

“Everyone up!”

Peter raises his head to see the man he’d affectionately dubbed Lucky in honor of the way he stood in a “you-know-I-had-to-do-it-to-em” stance between punches. Knockoff Mr. Luciano was not a fan, to put it lightly.

Which is exactly why Peter chirps back, “Oh, hey Lucky!” as he stands.

The man glowers, pressing a fist into his palm in a way that 100 percent proved Peter’s point.

Behind him, a lady with a ponytail so tight that it must be practically ripping her scalp out stands in a similar position. Since the name Lucky’s already been taken, he takes the less creative route and just calls her Ponytail.

“Wow, an actual woman. How progressive! Glad to know you’re an Equal Opportunity Employer.”

He takes immense satisfaction in MJ’s snort behind him.

“Let’s go,” Lucky grunts out.

“A field trip? Sorry, I didn’t get the permission slip signed.”

“You sure you don’t wanna come? Not that it matters to me, but this may be your only chance to use the bathroom for a while.”

Ah, she speaks!

Peter shrugs, but since a bathroom does sound incredibly appealing, now that he thinks about it, he begrudgingly follows. He hears MJ and Flash do the same, Ponytail taking up the rear.

“Is this because of my kidnapping etiquette speech last night? Because the next item on the list is food, if you forgot.”

Lucky shoves Peter forward from behind in response. “Less talking, more walking.”

Peter rolls his eyes, managing to keep his mouth closed for approximately three seconds before he spots the doors at the end of the hall. “Gendered bathrooms? Seriously? I take back the whole progressive thing.”

No response. Fine, don’t validate him. See if he cares.

“You have five minutes,” Lucky says.

MJ gives him a nod of affirmation, as if to say, “I’m here, it’s okay,” before pushing open the door to the women’s room with Ponytail on her heels. Peter follows Flash towards the door with a literal cartoon dick drawn on it before Lucky holds his arm out, palm clocking Peter in the chest.

“The fuck?”

Lucky peers down at him, and Peter straightens his back in an attempt to not appear as short as he unfortunately is. Then his scarred lips curl into a sneer, and he leans down right in Peter’s face to say, words dripping with smugness, “The girl’s room is over there.”

Peter freezes. He wishes he didn’t, wishes those words didn’t bring up a shame so primal that he feels like a child again, like a prepubescent twig of a kid so easily broken by the feeling of _wrongness_ imbedded so deeply in his DNA. It’s like a slap in the face, a million times harder than any of the hits Lucky usually doles out.

It stings worse because this hasn’t happened in years, not since Ben took him by his skinny hand to change his name and May helped him find a new school where people would only ever know him as _Peter._ He feels ungrateful now, selfish. A lot of kids don’t have people like Ben and May in their lives. He just needs to suck it up.

He can feel Flash’s eyes on him, and looks up to see him staring from where he’s halfway through the door to the bathroom that Peter should be in. (Shouldn’t he?)

The confusion in Flash’s face is beginning to morph into realization, and Lucky is laughing—when did he start laughing?—and Peter’s cheeks are aflame and tears are prickling in his eyes and it takes everything in him to turn around and walk to the other door. At least this one doesn’t have a crude drawing on it, because Peter’s feet feel heavy enough without the added weight of yet another reminder of his biology.

As he begins to push it open with his shoulder, he once again stops, paralyzed, drowning in shame and humiliation as he looks at Lucky and asks, “Can you unstick these?”

The man does so with a sickeningly wide grin, and then Peter is high-tailing it into the bathroom, head down and shoulders hunched. He barely avoids barreling into Ponytail, who’s standing by the sinks, in his haste to enter a stall, willing his tears to stay in his stupid fucking eyes for at least another few seconds.

He practically knocks the door off its hinges with how hard he closes it, only remembering to rein in his strength at the groaning of metal. Then, finally, he allows the traitorous tears to fall. He bites his lip to keep his sobs in check, resting his forehead against the stall wall that’s only inches taller than he is. It makes him feel like he’s being watched.

“Peter?”

Her voice is soft, concerned, nearly inaudible of the echoing of slightly dented metal pressed against his forehead and the humming of a vent.

He sniffles. “Yeah?”

A short exhale. “I’m sorry.”

Peter shrugs before remembering she can’t see it. “It’s whatever, I guess.”

“Hey!” Ponytail snaps. “Quit it with the chit-chat.”

Peter sighs, moving away from the wall because, now that he thinks about it, he really does have to piss, and he wouldn’t put it past Lucky to make good on his five-minute threat.

A few moments later, the annoying sound of Candy Crush fills the room, and if Peter didn’t want to die before, he certainly does now. He zips up his pants with a groan, then uses the non-bloodied part of his sleeves to wipe away the tear tracks slowly drying on his cheeks.

He’s about to open the door, readying a remark about Ponytail being a Facebook Mom to quip out while he washes his hands, when he realizes it: his hands are free. Backing away from the door, Peter gently places his palms against the gross cement wall that apparently is the only decor in this godforsaken place. He feels his skin adhere to its surface, the slight suction-y tingle that he’s come to know well. 

Slowly, he begins to climb.

Hand, foot, hand, foot. Wash, rinse, repeat. He’s on the ceiling in no time, looking over to see that Ponytail is thankfully still distracted. From this vantage point, it’ll be child’s play to take her out. But then what?

 _The vent_.

He freezes as MJ emerges from her stall and approaches the sinks. To her credit, she only falters slightly at the sight of him on the ceiling. He holds a single finger up to his lips (but doesn’t touch them, because he’s not a gross man who doesn’t wash his hands). MJ glances at Ponytail—wholly engrossed in her outdated cell phone—and then gives him a thumbs up.

Peter crawls so that he’s directly above her as MJ gingerly turns on the sink. That, for some reason, is enough to get their probably Minion-meme-loving captor to look up—but by then it’s too late, because Peter is dropping onto her shoulders and knocking her out with a quick jab to the head. Her phone clatters to the floor, almost completely shattering yet still managing to play the infuriating game background music.

Peter stomps on it for good measure.

“That was hot,” MJ says with a smirk.

Peter gives a small bow. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

He fights the urge to make a Twilight reference as he gestures for MJ to climb onto his back, which she does with a huff.

“What’s the plan, doofus?”

Her breath is hot in his ear, and he nearly loses his grip on the wall that he’s beginning to scale.

“The vent,” he says, nodding at the slatted entrance above them. “I can get Flash from the other room, and then we should be able to get out of here.”

He shifts his weight when he makes it to the grate, easily ripping it away from the wall. “Okay, you’re gonna climb in first, and then—“

“Time’s up! Helen, bring ‘em out!”

Peter barely has time to process what’s about to happen (not to mention Ponytail’s incredibly fitting “can-I-speak-to-your-manager” name) before his wrists are snapping together, the vent cover falling from his hands with an absurdly loud clanging and MJ’s weight yanking him back until he’s holding onto the wall with the soles of his feet alone.

“Go,” Peter hisses, jerking his head towards the vent.

MJ frowns but complies, carefully climbing around Peter so that she can reach the vent. He’s in the midst of giving her a boost with his hands when a feeling of _danger!_ runs through him. Oh, and also electricity.

“What the fuck is going on in here?”

His entire body seizes at the voltage emanating from the vibranium on his wrists, and then he’s falling, the disgusting ground rushing up to meet him. The impact knocks all the air out of his lungs, and he’s pretty sure he blacks out for a second, because the next thing he knows, MJ’s weight is heavy across his chest.

That wakes him up real quick.

“MJ,” he says, voice raspy. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replies, looking down at him with concern.

He takes the opportunity to glance down at the cuffs surrounded by now-burnt skin and says, in his best impression, “Wow, I didn’t know it did that.”

That seems to break the tension, because MJ snorts before she stands and helps him to his feet. The world spins around him in the process, and he has to close his eyes to keep from throwing up.

“You!” Oh joy, he forgot about Lucky. “I told you not to try anything funny!”

Peter sighs. “I mean, technically, you didn’t. I’m a good listener, remember?”

Lucky groans with what is undoubtedly rage, and Peter’s head throbs with what is undeniably a concussion. (Not that he isn’t going to deny it later to MJ.)

“You’re a fucking brat, is what you are.” Lucky grabs him roughly by the shoulder, steering him out of the godforsaken bathroom. MJ follows, then stops.

“Leave him alone, asshole.”

Lucky freezes and turns to her, and Peter stumbles. “What did you just say to me, little lady?”

Peter, eyes wide, frantically shakes his head.

“I _said_ , stop taking out your unresolved childhood trauma on people who did nothing wrong.”

Peter almost chokes at this, and a few feet behind him, Flash (whose existence he’d all but forgotten about) lets out a gasp like a dying animal.

The grip on Peter’s shoulder tightens, and he has no doubt that it will bruise. Oh well. It’s not like the rest of his body isn’t already a lovely shade of black and blue.

“People who did nothing wrong?” Lucky hisses.

“Great, a backstory,” Peter says with a sigh.

“Tony Stark has killed thousands of innocent people.” _Here we go again._

“He doesn’t do that anymore,” Peter replies, attempting to shrug Lucky’s hand off his shoulder. If anything, his meaty fingers clench down tighter.

“It doesn’t fucking matter. The damage is already done.”

“So what? You’re taking it out on me?”

Lucky has the audacity to shrug. “If you just answered our questions—“

“Fucking hell,” Peter mutters. “Can we go back to when you were just silently beating me up?”

The smile that Lucky cracks is not validating in the slightest. “Sure thing.”

* * *

Peter ends up in the same room as the day before. It’s dark, musty, and dank, and not in the good way.

“Is this the VIP lounge?” he asks as he’s wrenched towards the chair in the center of the room.

Lucky doesn’t respond. It’s just the two of them now, Ponytail god-knows-where and MJ and Flash back in their cell, sweet cell.

“Not a talker, huh? I get it. It’s cool, totally cool.”

“Do you ever fucking shut up?” Lucky groans, pushing him down into the chair none too lightly. He then releases the vibranium cuffs from each other, snapping them into place on the arm rests.

“Nope,” Peter says, popping the “p”.

Lucky looks seconds away from smacking him when Cat-Man enters the room, pushing a cart of clattering metal tools ahead of him.

“Ooh, are those for me?” Peter asks, leaning forward in his seat.

This time, after a pointed look from his boss, Lucky does smack him. Peter doesn’t react, his eyes instead trained on the assortment of tools before him that he’s pretty sure aren’t for fixing things.

“Look at all those chickens,” he breathes out, snapping back to himself at the glares of confused annoyance trained on him. “I told you guys we were doing Vines today, remember?”

He still can’t take his eyes off the instruments before him, attempting to mentally steel himself. Fuck, they need to get out of there ASAP.

“Are you ready to tell me where Morgan Stark is now, Peter?” The way Cat-Man says his name makes his skin crawl, almost as much as the way he says _her_ name.

“Go to hell,” he spits. “I don’t know jack.”

Cat-Man frowns and tsk’s his tongue. “Maybe your answer will change after a bit more...convincing.”

He trails his hand over the tools: scalpels, screwdrivers, pliers, a fucking hammer. Jesus Christ, who the hell _i_ _s_ this guy?

The lunatic eventually lands on a small, serrated knife. Peter barely even processes the pain as it digs into his arm, nor the questions and threats spilling from Cat-Man’s lips. He’s too busy staring at the tools. _Tools._

And if he happens to leave later, limping and bloody, with a pair of crimping pliers tucked in his pocket...well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall ever notice ppl never use the bathroom in kidnapping content? bc i do
> 
> also sorry for all the fucking references its 5am and i hate myself lol
> 
> for the cw: starting with the line “MJ gives him a nod of affirmation” to “Leave him alone, asshole”, peter is forced to use the women’s bathroom. essentially, he then tries to take out a guard and escape, but is caught.


	4. i feel it in my bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mj vs emotions: the ultimate showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry this is so late, and im still not rly sure how i feel about this chapter, but i just wanted to get something out. coronavirus has kind of upended my life, and i’m still trying to adjust. to everyone reading, please stay safe, stay at home, and take care of yourselves <3
> 
> also wow im rly just picking random lyrics from this song huh

MJ is about five seconds away from cutting a bitch. 

Actually, scratch that—she’s about two seconds away from ripping someone’s heart out with her bare hand human sacrifice-style, and even that’s being generous.

The anger simmering inside of her is turning venomous, acid and vitriol crawling up the back of her throat. The fierce need to  _ protect _ is overwhelming, swelling and threatening to swallow her whole. The vice-like grip of the guard on Peter’s arm, the shame and embarrassment still etched clear as day on his face—the motherfucker wasn’t getting out of here alive if MJ had anything to say about it.

“Let go of him!”

She surges forward, ready to...to do what, exactly? She doesn’t have super strength, or kidnapping experience, or even a semblance of a plan. But she has rage, and that will have to be enough.

Unfortunately, the fire that she’s half certain is radiating out of her skin isn’t enough to stop the fingernails suddenly cutting into her arm from jerking her backwards. 

“Hey!” She tries to wrench herself free, still struggling to get closer to Peter. Her former bathroom escort—now sporting one hell of a shiner on her forehead—doesn’t let up.

“Let’s go, little missy,” she hisses, breath hot on MJ’s face.

MJ shakes her head, continuing to pull. She sees Peter do the same, though with notably more success. He makes it halfway to her before he suddenly goes rigid, collapsing onto his side.

“Stop!” MJ shouts, eyes transfixed by the shudders wracking through Peter’s body. “I get it! I’ll go. I’ll go!”

Her voice cracks on the last word. Her hands shake almost as badly as Peter’s, who has finally stopped convulsing. She sees the red electric burns on his wrists as the guard hauls him to his feet, the matching crimson color dribbling from where he must have bitten his lip.

She did this. She did this.  _ She did this. _

She wants to apologize a million times over, to take the pain for him. But the words stay lodged in her throat, and she can only hope that he can read the  _ I’m sorry _ in her eyes.

This time, when she feels a jerk on her arm, she follows.

Flash, after a moment of deer-in-the-headlights hesitation, scurries along behind her, seemingly deciding that whatever fate awaited MJ had to be at least somewhat less shitty than Peter’s. A part of her wishes that Flash would take a stand, do something heroic and selfless for once in his life; do what MJ hadn’t been able to. The other part of her is still wallowing in a torrent of guilt, swirling and echoing in her mind with each traitorous step she takes.

MJ feels numb as she’s led back into the cell, her body unconsciously following the orders given to her as her mind continues its endless loop of self-loathing.

_ Peter reaching towards her. Peter falling to the ground. Peter’s body twisting, bleeding, bruised. _

She barely registers the door locking behind her, ears ringing as she tries to reel in her thoughts. It’s a losing battle.

But she has to stay cool. Collected. It should be easy. That’s her thing, isn’t it? Always keeping herself in control?

“Here.”

MJ flinches back at the sudden pressure on her arm, pressing herself back against the wall. She can feel her pulse thudding, blood rushing through a body that she’s slowly beginning to once again recognize as her own.

She also recognizes the face staring at her: Flash.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

MJ can’t help the snort that escapes her. “You? Sorry? That’s a new one.”

Flash shrugs, looking down at his feet. “I just thought you’d want this.”

He holds out a plastic bottle of water, which she takes with narrowed eyes. “Where’d you get this?”

“The scary lady gave it to me.”

MJ frowns as she turns the bottle over in her hands, the liquid sloshing inside. Then her eyes snap up. “Wait, did you drink this?”

Flash at least has the tact to look embarrassed. “I mean, I was thirsty.”

“So you thought you’d drink the water our _kidnappers_ gave us? Seriously?”

Another shrug from Flash. “It tasted normal to me.”

MJ groans. Of all the people to be stuck with, why did it have to be  _ this  _ particular idiot?

“She also gave me this,” Flash adds, pulling two granola bars out of his pocket. These, at least, appear normal and unwrapped.

MJ lets out a deep breath.  _ Control. She was in control. _ “Okay. We’ll split one and save the other to Peter.”

Flash looks ready to complain, and MJ is 100% not in the mood. “Listen, you’re just gonna have to suck it up, because—“

“We can’t.” Cutting her off  _ and  _ disagreeing with her?  _ Fuck no. _

He speaks again before she can respond.

“They’re...they said they’re watching, okay? And if we don’t eat all of this, they said Spider-Man was gonna regret it.” Silence. “I swear I’m not lying. Like, I swear on my life, and all my Tik Tok followers. For real.”

MJ swallows.

“I know.” She chokes the words out like broken glass, forces in an equally sharp breath, and reaches out her hand.

* * *

Peter comes back covered in blood, and MJ has never felt so helpless.

He’s wearing the tattered remains of what was once her sweater, which she is now definitely going to burn if they get out of this—No,  _ when  _ they get out of this.

She forces herself to stand still as Peter is unceremoniously dumped on the floor, his body skidding across the floor until he lands on his stomach with a groan.

“You’d better have an answer for me tomorrow, Spider- _ Man _ .” The way that their captor sneers, the insinuation that Peter is anything but male—MJ feels the familiar heat of anger surging within her once again. “Or I’ll have to get more...creative.”

“You betcha,” Peter rasps out, lifting his head momentarily only to have it flop back down onto what MJ can now see is his backpack.

With a scoff and the clanging of metal, they are once again left alone. MJ immediately falls to her knees at Peter’s side.

“Hey,” she whispers, gently cupping his cheek.

“Hey,” he mumbles, turning his head to lean into her hand. “Sorry ‘bout your sweater.”

“Do  _ not  _ apologize to me right now, Parker.”

Peter hums. “Thought I was s’posed to when I bleed on your stuff.”

“Yeah, well, that rule doesn’t apply right now.”

“So we’re breakin’ the rules now?” Peter asks, voice raspy.

“When are we not?”

Peter shrugs, then winces. He stills at what MJ is certain is a look of concern on her face. “It’s not that bad, I swear.”

Anyone with eyes could tell that’s bullshit. His entire torso is spotted with crimson, the tattered remnants of MJ’s sweater riddled with holes.

_ They stabbed him. They stabbed him while I was here eating a fucking Clif Bar. _

“‘sides, it’ll be healed by tomorrow.”

A slightly more believable lie, but MJ knows his tells. The slight twitch of his jaw, the way his eyes slide to the left—not to mention the fact that MJ unfortunately knows from experience that his healing doesn’t work right when he doesn’t eat—are a blatant sign that things are so far from okay.

MJ narrows her eyes. “Don’t lie to me.”

Peter seems to shrink in on himself at that, and MJ feels a twinge of guilt. She should say something to him. Comfort him. That’s what people do in these situations, right?

Look, she’ll be the first to admit that she isn’t the best at processing emotions. But it isn’t totally her fault; it seems like every time she tries to “share her feelings like a healthy individual,” something inevitably gets fucked up along the way. Maybe there’s some innate hostility towards any sort of vulnerability coded into her DNA, or just the fact that she doesn’t have the privilege of being a white man who can do no wrong; probably a combination of the two.

So she says nothing. It’s the wrong (non)response.

She watches as Peter pushes himself up onto his knees with a groan, reaching out to ( _ help him? stop him? _ ) touch him only for him to shy away. Her hand lingers in the air for a moment, a phantom limb, before falling back to her side.

In an uncharacteristic quiet, one that screams once again that  _ something is wrong _ , Peter stands the rest of the way. MJ’s insides flip as she catches a glimpse of even more red stains on his stomach.

She flinches at Flash’s gasp. “Holy shit, dude.”

“I’ll be fine,” she hears Peter say, voice somehow once again imbued with confidence.

Flash’s only response is a mantra of “holy shit”’s.

She should say something. Why won’t she say something? Even an unwarranted sarcastic comment would be better than this silence choking her.

Peter glances at her— _ are her thoughts really that loud? _ —before turning away. Then, with a deep breath, he vaults up onto the ceiling, crawling into a corner to the chorus of Flash’s unbridled fanboying.

MJ, on the other hand, has seen him do this only a few times before. Not the “crawling on the ceiling thing;” unfortunately, his secret identity came with the bonus knowledge that he loved to torment everyone (especially Tony Stark) by randomly dropping down and scaring the shit out of them. No, it was the way he’d managed to squeeze himself up into the corner that made her heart clench. This was his I-just-had-a-bad-flashback position, the one that he’d explained to her afterwards was some strange spider-like instinct for comfort.

This was the neon sign broadcasting for the millionth time that things were so irrevocably fucked.

“I’m sorry,” MJ whispers. “You can come down.”

The only indication that he heard her is the way the soles of his feet press harder into the wall, bits of concrete flaking off onto the ground. He manages to turn even further away from her, only the curve of his back visible.

She debates going to sit in the corner below him, because at least then she could see his face.

Instead, she lays on her side, cushions her head on her arm, and closes her eyes.

* * *

She wakes up from what was definitely a hunger-induced sleep to Peter passed out on the floor next to her.  _ On the floor _ . Her heart catches in her throat. What if he fell? What if he’s even more injured because she sucked at being his girlfriend and—

“I’m okay.”

His voice is muffled from where it’s pressed into what she now sees is his backpack, which he’d folded into a makeshift pillow. Even though he’s on his stomach, he manages to sense her confusion.

“Seemed comfier down here,” he says, shrugging and then rolling over to face her. “Wanted to be near you.”

MJ can’t help the heat that rushes to her face.

Peter smiles. “Your heart’s really fast.”

“I’ve told you that’s creepy, right?”

All she gets is a shrug, and a cute dusting of pink on Peter’s cheeks, and this is not the time nor the place but she can’t stop herself from pressing a kiss to his lips. They’re rough and chapped against hers, and she’s about to berate him for not moisturizing when she remembers that he hasn’t had water in a few days.

Her anxiety must be palpable, because Peter moves his hand to rest on her shoulder. “Hey,” he says softly. “It’s gonna be okay.”

MJ wishes she could believe him.

* * *

They need to come up with a plan. Well, more accurately,  _ she  _ needs to come up with a plan, because Flash is obviously teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown and Peter is god-knows-where being tortured with god-knows-what.

“Fuck,” MJ groans, all but tearing her hair out.

Flash looks up from where he’s sitting against the wall. “What?”

“We can’t just sit here anymore,” she says, beginning to pace.

“Well, what else are we supposed to do?” is Flash’s elegant reply.

“I don’t know. Break out of here?”

Flash just stares at her like she’s grown another head. MJ wishes she could blame him.

“It’s just, everything is so fucked. Peter keeps acting like everything’s fine, but it’s  _ not _ , it’s really not.” She kicks out at random, sending Peter’s backpack skidding across the floor and into Flash’s leg. God, she’s acting like a toddler.

“Ow,” Flash says with a grimace, rubbing at his thigh.

“Sorry,” she says, and wow, what a new low: She can apologize to Flash, but not to her own fucking boyfriend.

“What’s he even carrying in here? A fucking brick?” Flash unzips the bag and begins to rifle through it. “Shit, that hurt.”

MJ wants to tell him to quit acting like a baby, but considering that this is both her fault and the result of a literal temper tantrum, she bites the comment back.

“Seriously? Our bio textbook?  _ And  _ two binders? And what the fuck is—“

Flash suddenly goes quiet. When he speaks again, his voice is unnaturally even. “Hey, MJ—“

“Michelle,” she corrects on reflex. Flash doesn’t even seem to hear her. 

“You should come check out these Decathlon notes. They’re really good.”

Red flag.  _ Major  _ red flag. Because Flash, complimenting Peter? Never.

Slowly, MJ makes her way over to him. “For the meet next week?”

She can see Flash’s snarky reply about how “the meet is actually in two weeks because he’s cleared his schedule since Parker’s gonna bail” die on his tongue. “Yeah.”

She glances up at the camera as she slides down next to him, pulling her knees up to her chest in a mirror of Flash’s position. It’s trained on them, but so far nobody has come in to stop them. Probably because they were just there for collateral, and because really, what could two non-enhanced teenagers do with some school supplies?

Next to her, Flash is making a big show of shifting towards her while keeping Peter’s three-ring binder propped up on his thighs. The shuffling is awkward, and MJ wishes he would just hand it to her already. She’s seconds away from grabbing it when she sees what “notes” Flash is trying to show her: Peter’s mask.

It’s flipped inside out, the fabric lining stripped to show a mess of wires. Some are twisted together in a less-than-sleek way that definitely wasn’t in Stark’s design, while others jut out, frayed and disconnected.

There are also, coincidentally, actual notes, though not ones that would be helpful at any competition unless they added a Spider-Man suit schematics category since the last time she checked.

“He’s been working on it,” she whispers. “His notes, I mean.”

It makes sense, all of a sudden. Sleeping in the corner—no, _hiding from the camera_ ; “waking up” on the floor by his backpack where the mask just happened to be stashed?

Flash’s nod is grossly exaggerated, and MJ face-palms internally.  “They’re not done, though. He’s gonna be screwed at the meet.”

MJ meets Flash’s eyes, following them as he jerks his gaze towards a set of pliers tucked into the binder’s pocket. She has to actively force herself not to throw up when she notices a speck of what is undeniably blood on the handle.

“Well, Eugene,” MJ forces out, making a show of pulling Peter’s textbook out of his bag. “It looks like you’re being promoted.”

The scowl on Flash’s face morphs into a grin, his features into one of understanding.

“I’m not great at this science stuff, so why don’t I quiz you?” She flips the book open to a random page.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Flash pick up the set of pliers.

“Does this mean I don’t have to be first alternate?”

MJ meets his eyes, groaning as he winks. 

“Why don’t you tell me about the,” she glances down at the book in her lap, “carbon cycle, and then we’ll talk.”

“Whatever you say, MJ.

It isn’t until later, after hours of “studying,” that she realizes she didn’t correct him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to try to write more bc this covid depression is real, and also to give ppl something to read at home (where yall better be!!!) so if ppl have writing prompts feel free to drop them in the comments.


	5. all systems go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter is straight up Not Having A Good Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took....a million years
> 
> cw for violence, nonconsensual drug use, & misgendering

For all the times that it’s saved his ass, Peter still finds himself hating his Spider-Sense. It’s the prickle of a thousand eyes watching him, the moment of stillness just seconds before the explosion. The few seconds of quiet as his aunt looks into his eyes and tries to find the words to tell a child that his parents aren’t coming back from their business trip. The minutes he spends kneeling over Ben, waiting and praying for somebody, _anybody_ , to help while his uncle’s life bleeds out beneath his too-small hands.

The buzzing at the nape of his neck is near constant at this point, has been since he woke up in this hellhole. It makes his body thrum with restless energy, practically vibrating out of his skin.

But he can’t move—there’s unbreakable metal strapping him to a chair, and a dizziness fogging up his brain that likely has something to do with the fact that he can’t remember the last time he ate.

“Answer the question.”

Peter manages to lift his chin up to meet his captor’s eyes. They’re beady, slitted in an anger that seems to radiate through the man’s entire being. Peter attempts to hold his gaze, but he’s tired and thirsty and cold and _god_ what he wouldn’t give for a hot shower right about now…

His chin droops back down to his chest, and Cat-Man clicks his tongue in disappointment. “Some hero you are.”

Peter can’t even find it in himself to feel embarrassed by the comment, especially as he feels panic suddenly gripping his heart like a vice as Lucky reels his hand back into a fist. His senses scream, but there’s nothing he can do—he just grits his teeth and takes it, wrists chafing against their bindings as the punch slams into him.

The hit leaves Peter panting, the air knocked out of his lungs. He feels young, in this moment, asthmatic and weak and so incredibly far out of his depth. Peter swipes his tongue over his cracked lips, which were split and bleeding before the beating even started.

Cat-Man smirks. “No more snarky comments?”

Peter still doesn’t answer, focusing his energy on simply breathing. He’s not sure his dry throat could form words even if he tried. 

Cat-Man sighs, turning to his goon. “Guess we’ll have to see if your little girlfriend knows anything tomorrow.”

“Wait,” Peter croaks. He wants to say more—to beg and plead and do _anything_ to protect MJ from this torment—but all he can manage is a few harsh coughs.

“Dry throat?” Cat-Man asks, leering.

Peter’s continued hacking is answer enough.

“Well, I did bring this for you…”

He pulls out a bottle of water from god-knows-where, and it’s suddenly the most beautiful thing Peter’s ever seen. It must be evident, too, what with the way Cat-Man is continuing to grin at him. There’s something off, Peter’s sure of it; and if it comes down to protecting Morgan, the fire in his throat will continue to rage until he burns up inside and out.

“Just answer one question for me,” Cat-Man says slowly, like he’s talking to a child. “And this is yours.

“Do you still think your precious Tony Stark is coming to save you?”

* * *

The water was drugged. _Of course_ the water was drugged. He was an idiot, an utter fool. But in that moment, all he could think about was the cool relief in his throat. He’d finished nearly the entire bottle before it occurred to him that maybe he should pace himself, and only as the last drop passed his chapped lips did he realize that water didn’t usually taste so sweet. 

He could feel a haze settling over his brain, blinking slowly as if that would somehow make the fogginess go away. A yank on his arm only worsens the vertigo, his brain stuck on a tilt-a-whirl as he stumbles upright. He barely manages to avoid tripping over his own feet, the firm grip on his bicep the only tether keeping him upright. Whoever the hand belonged to—if it was even a hand and not some disembodied spirit—is firm as they jerk him forward. 

It takes a moment for his body to catch up, the signals from his brain to _move, goddamnit_ twisting and turned in on themselves. There’s molasses running through his veins, and kaleidoscopes blurring across his unfocused, half-lidded eyes. Did he leave his glasses somewhere?

“M’ glasses.”

“What?” huffs a gruff voice.

“M’ glasses,” he repeats, his words slurring together like the soup in his skull. “I lost ‘em.”

The man—there’s a man attached to the hand still gripping him, he slowly realizes—simply rolls his eyes.

“For real,” he says, words and thoughts blurring as he tries to force his tongue to move. 

Another shove forward, and the ground is suddenly much closer than it was a second ago. There’s a thudding sound, and dimly he realizes it must be him, because there’s damp concrete pressed into his cheek and small pinpricks of pain scraping across his arms and knees.

“...stage of mitosis where sister chromatids separate…”

“Metaphase, the second…”

Peter blinks sluggishly, struggling to keep his eyes open despite the pull of sleep. Maybe he’s already dreaming.

He’s pulled roughly to his feet, nearly falling over again. The ringing in his ears is getting louder.

“...tell me what cytokinesis is?”

He knows that voice, but he can’t place it. The only word that comes to his mind is _safe,_ and he forces himself forward if only to reach it.

“After telophase, the cell membrane…”

A different voice now, louder and deeper. He can’t place it, but it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He needs to reach them, the disembodied voices, because he has to...he has to...he has to do something. At least, he thinks he does. He feels a sense of pressure in his gut, though for the life of him he can’t remember what seems to be so urgent. Maybe the voices will know.

He quickens his pace, forcing back the nausea that rears its ugly head with each step. Had it not been for the...the hand ( _yeah, it was a hand, attached to a man)_ holding on to him, he would surely be back on the cold-wet-mildewy-nauseating ground.

He holds a hand out, coming to a stop. “Hol’ on,” he pants, teetering forward. “‘M gonna—“

He retches, swaying for a moment before the grip on his arm suddenly releases and he falls to his knees. His stomach twinges, his throat burning. He chokes on more bile, chest heaving as he tries to breathe.

“Get up,” a voice commands, too loud and too close but there’s nothing he can do, even as acid creeps up his throat and his head pounds in time with his heartbeat. “Fucking disgusting.”

He blinks, and suddenly he’s back on his feet. He can’t feel them, he realizes, can’t feel most of his body. Just the rush of blood in his ears and the echoing of strange words like “prophase” and “homologies.” He knows them, he thinks, or at least he should. Instead, they just add to the rattling inside his head. 

He walks, though for how long, he has no idea. Maybe an hour, maybe a minute. Maybe he hasn’t even walked at all.

The edges of his vision are getting darker, and some part of him knows that something’s up, that he needs to ignore the sweet siren call of unconsciousness. But his thoughts are slippery, evading his uncoordinated grasp. His limbs refuse to work, and the world just won’t. Stop. _Spinning._

“Special delivery.”

A voice cuts through the chatter in his brain, and suddenly the words overlapping and ricocheting in his skull quiet down.

“Peter?”

This voice is soft. He recognizes it from before, the one he knew was _safe._ He can make out the outline of a seated figure through the barely open slits of his eyes, attempting to tug himself closer to them.

The pressure on his arm vanishes as he staggers forward, taking his stability along with it. He careens towards the ground, watches it rush up towards him in slow-motion. Strong arms catch him before he reaches it—soft arms, he knows them, he _knows_ he does.

“What the fuck did you do to him?”

He winces as the volume of the words pierces through him, pressing his head further into the shoulder it’s resting on.

“I would worry about yourself, little lady.”

“What the _hell_ did you just call me, you piece of—“

“MJ,” another voice hisses. It’s the other one, from before. “Not now.”

 _MJ._ He rolls the name around in his mind, trying to parse it into something recognizable. 

He hears a huff from whoever’s chest he’s being held against— _must be MJ’s_ , he sluggishly realizes. If only he could remember who that is.

“Tomorrow’s your turn with the boss, missy.” The arms wrapped around Peter stiffen. “Better rest up.”

He hears footsteps receding, feels his small grasp on consciousness slipping loose. “I don’,” he mumbles, his uncoordinated tongue tripping over the words, “I don’ feel so good.”

He barely processes the shouted _fuck_ before he tumbles into darkness.

* * *

He floats for a while. Not quite present, but not completely gone. He tries to open his eyes, but his muscles are dead weights. He hears the rustling of branches in the wind, the babble of a stream. He hears two heartbeats, both unhealthily fast, thumping beneath the rhythmic sound of wires being crimped. He knows that sound from the lab—at least, that’s what his mush in his brain tells him.

There are hushed voices, too, he realizes, straining his ears to pick apart the words.

“...drugged him?”

The body he’s pressed against, with its warm arms around him and breath brushing over his neck, shrugs. “Probably.”

The other voice— _not MJ’s,_ his mind supplies—lowers even further. “So then what do we do?”

Another shrug from MJ, which is weird, because her heart sounds like it’s going a mile a minute. “We just keep doing what we’re doing.”

“All hands on deck here, remember? We need Parker’s help.” Peter squirms at the bite in their voice, only relaxing at the feeling of fingers running through his hair.

“And we’ll get it. But right now, he needs to sleep whatever this is off.”

As MJ’s fingers continue to lightly scratch at his scalp, Peter slips back under.

* * *

_He’s flying through the city. He’s weightless, flipping and gliding as the wind rushes past his face. He’s going somewhere important but, for the life of him, he can’t remember where. He has to fix something, something that no one else can._

“How will we even know if it works?”

 _He blinks and he’s sitting in Ned’s bedroom, but something’s wrong. Have the walls always been blue? Since when does Ned have a hamster? And why the_ hell _does he have a goatee?_

_He tries to ask, but his mouth refuses to cooperate. Ned doesn’t even look at him._

“Trust me, he’ll hear it.”

_The voice is so ridiculously un-Ned-like that Peter’s eyes dart around of their own accord, trying to find the source._

“How the fuck—“

_That one isn’t Ned either, and Peter can feel goosebumps pebbling up over his skin._

“Super hearing, remember?”

 _That voice is MJ. He wants to cry from relief. If MJ’s here, she’ll know what’s going on. She_ always _knows what’s going on._

_He tries to stand, but somehow his body doesn’t get the message._

“You know that’s creepy, right?”

_There’s someone else in Ned’s room. Peter tries to look, but even his neck is rooted in place. A hand claps over his mouth, and he tries to scream. No sound comes out._

“Tell me about it.”

 _He wants to yell to MJ, because she’s here somewhere, but there’s a palm tightly gripping his chin and another pulling at his hair. It’s long, too long; he can see it creeping down his back, flowing and overgrown and disgustingly_ feminine.

“Shit. Hey, Peter. You gotta wake up.”

 _He struggles out of the hold, ripping the hands away from him. They’re familiar, calloused and worn and_ he knows those hands, _he’d know them anywhere. He tries to croak Ben’s name, but there’s no air in his lungs, and the palms clasped in his aren’t wet with sweat but rather with blood, and he tries to pull away, but they stick, stuck like super glue, and_ why can’t he let go, _he wants to ask, wants to plead, though to whom he isn’t sure._

“Peter!”

 _That voice isn’t Ben’s, and soon the face isn’t either, instead replaced by a scowl and dark, hard eyes. Lips pull into a sneer, spitting out a word that sounds like_ Morgan _but can’t be, because_ nobody is supposed to know, _Mr. Stark trusted him, even when no one else did, but now even Mr. Stark isn’t coming for him and he’s going to_ rot here.

_He tries to whisper an apology, but still can’t make the words, can’t take a breath, and there’s something crushing his lungs like concrete and mortar and—_

“Peter!”

The weight on his chest disappears, as does the face scowling down at him, leaving him panting. Were they even there to begin with?

He tries to blink his eyes open, but there’s too much light, too many fluorescents popping like fireworks behind his eyelids and buzzing in his ears.

“It’s okay,” someone whispers. “Just go back to sleep.”

Peter does.

* * *

He surfaces again to the distant sound of a familiar voice.

“K’ren?” He asks blearily. “‘s that you?”

“Hello, Peter,” his AI replies.

He struggles to push himself upwards, the odd position he’s slumped in causing a fierce crick in his neck. “Wha’s goin’ on?”

Her response is overshadowed by a larger, less robotic voice.

“My name is MJ, doofus.”

Peter shakes his head, grimacing at the motion. He can practically feel the Earth turning beneath him, nausea once again curling in his gut. “Not talkin’ to you.”

“Yeah, well, there’s no one else here.” The last words are punctuated with a series of squeezes to Peter’s shoulder, aggravating the injuries that are slowly fading back into his memory.

Peter frowns, slowly pushing back the lead weighing down his eyelids. He blinks once, twice, his surroundings slowly coming into focus. He sees a face peering down at him, fuzzy around the edges but undeniably MJ.

“MJ?” he croaks.

MJ offers him a small smile. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Peter frowns, rubbing his fingers across his forehead in an attempt to massage his pounding headache away. “What happened?”

MJ’s eyes flit over her shoulder to glance at a shadowy blob that Peter, for the life of him, simply can’t identify. “Do you remember anything?”

Answering a question with a question; it’s undeniably MJ, but also _really_ not what he needs right now. 

“I was, uh…” Peter wracks his brain, getting nothing but a painful throbbing in response. He licks his lips to stall. They taste like copper. 

“You got drugged, dude.” Ah, so the shapeless blob speaks!

“Flash,” MJ hisses. “Not helpful.”

 _Flash._ Peter weighs the name on his tongue. Then he throws it off the scale in favor of the words he’s only just managed to process. “I got drugged?”

MJ sighs. “Somehow, yeah.”

“That…” Peter trails off, slowly trying to piece together a sentence while his thoughts remain scattered. “No, ‘s not possible.”

“Think about it, Peter. They know who you are.”

The softness of MJ’s voice does nothing to soften the blow, nor does it help drown out the horrific images—no, _memories_ — flashing through his mind.

“They want...they took…” The words stick in his throat, trapped in limbo between the haze in his brain and the numbness in his tongue. “Fuck.”

Someone snorts. “Pretty much.”

“Feels like that time when we…” Peter scrunches his face, searching for any sort of clarity in the colors exploding behind his eyelids. “At the party?”

“What?” MJ replies. “You mean the time you got so high you puked?”

Peter isn’t too out of it to not feel the way his cheeks heat up. “Wasn’ my fault,” he mutters. “The peppermin’ hated me.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” The blob—no wait, it’s definitely a person—asks.

MJ shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve just gotta keep working.”

Through the dust and cotton clogging his head, something finally clicks. “Work...I gotta, gotta work, gotta fix—“

“Shh,” MJ hisses, lightly squeezing the part of his wrist not obscured by the cuffs. “Flash and I are...taking care of it.”

Peter frowns, because that makes no sense. They can’t know about the mask, and he _needs_ to get it functional again before this clusterfuck of a situation gets even worse.

“Searching for signals. No signal available.” Peter freezes, because that voice is undeniably Karen’s.

“You did it,” he breathes, looking up into MJ’s eyes.

She shrugs. “It was a team effort.”

He can feel Flash’s gaze on him, still unnerving despite the fact that he’s been oddly civil; hell, he can’t remember the last time Flash even called him “Penis.”

“So what now?”

The wheels in Peter’s brain must still be turning a little too slowly, because it takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realize that MJ’s question is aimed at him.

“We have to get a signal to call.”

MJ blinks. “Come again?”

“We—ugh,” Peter groans, dragging his hand down his face. “Sorry, still a little…” he flattens one palm, tilting it back and forth in the motion he’s pretty sure means “iffy.”

He takes a deep breath, then tries again. “I was gonna call Ton—Mr. Stark, but it can’t...there’s no connection.”

He hopes his word vomit makes at least a semblance of sense.

“So there’s no reception,” MJ says.

Peter nods, but the motion causes the world to tilt dangerously once again. He presses a hand to the floor to steady himself against the spins, clenching his teeth to keep the nausea at bay.

“I think we’re underground,” he says. “Sounded like trees outside earlier. But that also could’ve been, y’know…”

“A hallucination?” Flash supplies.

Peter barely remembers not to move his head again, instead breathing out a strained “yeah.”

MJ shrugs. “It’s the best lead we have, so I say we run with it. Did you see a way out?”

Peter closes his eyes and attempts to recall what he can of the building. All he recovers is memories of cold, hard concrete and splashes of red. “I don’t…” he frowns, “I don’t think—not right now, I don’t—“

“Hey.” MJ wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him against her side. “It’s okay.”

He wants to snap back that _of course it’s not okay, he got them into this mess and now he can’t get them out._

But he’s Spider-Man, so he’ll figure it out. He has to. _It’s his responsibility._

“Okay,” he says, leaning in towards the center of their huddle. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”

* * *

“Are we sure this is gonna work? I don’t think this is gonna work.”

If Peter wasn’t focused on the seemingly impossible task of hanging on the ceiling while barely clinging to consciousness, he definitely would’ve smacked Flash by now.

MJ, who had begrudgingly answered him the first few times he asked, now just silently elbows him.

“Ow,” Flash mutters, rubbing at his arm. “That hurt.”

“Good.”

Peter tries to tune out their bickering in favor of stretching his hearing as far as it can reach, listening for footsteps or breathing or any sort of signal as to where their captors are. He clocks one of them pacing the hall, another in the bathroom. A third seems to be muttering about cleaning something, and Peter _really_ hopes that it’s his blood.

“There’s someone near the door,” he says, projecting his voice as lowly as he can without encroaching into _Peter-not-all-of-us-have-super-hearing_ territory.

MJ nods. “Ready?”

Peter gives a thumbs up and what he hopes is an encouraging smile, because all his blood is rushing to his head and he can’t hear much above the tapping of shoes resounding in his brain.

“Hey!” MJ shouts, walking up to the door and banging on it. “Hey, guard dude! I wanna talk to you!”

Peter holds his breath as the footsteps near and the door slowly unlocks and creaks open a crack.

“What was that, little lady?” Lucky’s patronizing tone and disgusting smugness leave Peter once again close to hurling.

“Your boss, he—he was right,” MJ says, laying her scared-little-girl voice on thick. “I do know about Tony Stark.”

Lucky huffs. “Why you tellin’ me now?”

“I needed to talk to you alone,” she says, sparing a glance over her shoulder towards Flash, curled up and facing the wall in MJ’s sweater. “I didn’t want him to know.”

“Ah,” Lucky replies, smirking as if he’s in on some big secret. “You’re welcome for taking care of that brat, by the way.”

Peter can see MJ’s fist clench at her side, see the slight tremble as she forces herself to relax it. He pushes himself even flatter against the ceiling. “So are we talking to your boss or what?”

The command in her tone seems to catch Lucky off-guard, and he quickly nods, pushing the door open all the way. “This way.”

MJ walks slowly forward, paces measured. Above her, Peter begins to crawl towards the door.

“So why are you with that punk anyways?” Lucky asks, ushering MJ (and, inadvertently, Peter) through the doorway. “She’s such a fucking bitch and—“

He’s cut off as Peter drops from the ceiling and onto his head, pushing him onto the floor. He tries to flip them around and pin Peter to the ground, but Peter can lift buses, can lift buildings, can lift disgusting pieces of shit like this asshole off of his shoulders and onto their backs like it’s nothing. Lucky tries to rear back up, but Peter doesn’t budge. 

“Stay down if you know what’s good for you,” he hisses, trying to quell the anger in his veins because if he doesn’t...if he doesn’t, he might do something he regrets. (Because this body before him is a waste of a human being and it would be so easy to punch him with all of his super strength, to bash his head against the ground _over and over and over and—)_

Peter barely has time to process the spark of adrenaline pulsing from the nape of his neck before his vision whites out in an onslaught of pain. He’s pretty sure he screamed, or is screaming now, and his body is contorted in an impossible shape as he tries to twist away from the fire lighting up under his skin and the _burning_ in his wrists and the uncontrollable twitching of his limbs. He sees everything and nothing, feels both blinding pain and blank nothingness. He is neither here nor there. Maybe he’s dead; maybe he wouldn’t mind.

He doesn’t notice the pain has stopped until he finds he’s able to taste blood in his mouth and smell the nauseating stench of burnt flesh. For a moment, he’s back on Coney Island, covered in ash and flames and crushed under a building and—

“—eter. Can you hear me?”

Peter tries to nod, but all he manages is a full-body spasm. He swallows, pushes back the bolts agony still thrumming through his veins, and tries again. “Yeah.”

His voice is rough, somehow even worse than before. He ignores it in favor of directing all of his energy towards sitting up. “I’m—“ he swallows again as his voice cracks. “I’m okay.”

A hand reaches out to help him to his feet, and it’s only when he’s back on his shaking legs does he realize that the hand belongs to Flash.

“You sure? Because you just got fucking electrocuted, dude.”

Peter shrugs, rolling out his shoulders and cracking his knuckles. He hopes the tremors still wracking his body every few seconds aren’t noticeable. “I’ve had worse.”

He looks down to see Lucky unconscious on the ground, a trail of blood leaking from his nose. He pokes at him with his toe; the man jostles but stays down.

“I have the mask.” Flash moves to hand it to Peter, but he shakes his head.

“Keep it. I’ve gotta deal with the rest of these guys. You and MJ should take it up and—wait,” Peter stops himself, looking between Lucky’s unmoving body and Flash. “Where’s MJ?”

Flash grimaces, shifting the ball of red fabric in his hands. (Hands that, Peter realizes, are busted and bloody.) “She had to go to find...shit, what did you call him? Cat-Man?”

Peter once again forgets how to breathe. “What?”

“The guy—he had the remote, and,” Flash gestures to a destroyed pile of plastic at his feet. “But it didn’t stop even after we, y’know…”

“I don’t...why the hell would you let her do that?” Peter knows he’s shouting, knows he’s being possessive and wrong, knows that MJ would rather die than let someone make her choices for her. But he also knows that he’s on the verge of either a panic attack or a murderous rampage, and Flash _still isn’t talking._

Flash looks at him like he’s an idiot. (He’s not wrong.) “You were gonna die, man.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

All he gets is another wince from Flash, who turns his gaze to the ground. “You didn’t see what it looked like. She was scared. _I_ was scared.”

Flash seems almost as shocked at his words as Peter is.

“Okay,” Peter says, bringing his hand to the bridge of his nose and exhaling sharply. “Okay, you’re still gonna take the mask out, and I’ll go get MJ.”

“What? No way, I wanna help!”

“Flash.” Peter isn’t ashamed to admit that he’s pretty much begging at this point. All he can focus on is how he needs to find MJ, and he needs to find her _fast._ “Please just go and call Mr. Stark. You can even...wear the mask.”

He bites the last part out over a groan, but Flash seems to light up at the suggestion, eagerly pulling the mask over his head.

“Whoa, this is sick!”

Peter ignores him. “Karen, give him full access. Scan for the best exit route.”

“Who the fuck is—“

“Alright, Peter. Permission granted.”

Peter doesn’t wait to hear Flash’s next stream of curses, taking off in a sprint and heading further down the hall. He twists and turns at random, listening for any sort of voice, any sort of indication of where MJ is before his heart explodes in his chest.

But it seems that some vengeful sort of karma beats him to the punch, because the concrete wall in front of him explodes first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i honestly dont rly know what this chapter is but im not giving up on writing, and hopefully i’ll have the motivation to finish it soon. hope everyone is staying safe & healthy!
> 
> also, if i hadn’t already committed myself to this godforsaken imagine dragons song, this chapter would 100% be called “there must be something in the water” in honor of our lord and savior katy perry


	6. the sun hasn’t died

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter, mj and flash say “aight imma head out”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in a shocking turn of events, i’ve actually finished this! idk what to say, i got sucked back into atla and now here we are...

In MJ’s defense, she didn’t  _ mean  _ to blow anything up. It just sort of... _ happened. _

(Who is she kidding? Of  _ course  _ she pounced on the first opportunity to get any sort of revenge. It’s quite literally the least these bastards deserve.)

Unfortunately, standing close to a blast radius—no matter how satisfying said blast may be—comes with a veritable list of cons; namely, an assortment of flying debris that will  _ definitely  _ leave a bruise and a near-blinding flash of light. But hey, if this is the bang she goes out with, so be it.

She takes a moment to stare at the remnants of the infernal machine that she’d just oh-so-satisfylingly overcharged to the point of explosion. Again, it technically wasn’t  _ her _ fault that the first blunt object she could find ended up being some gross variant of an electric cattle prod. How was she supposed to know that whacking the shit out of the device facilitating Peter’s torture ( _ don’t think about the screams, don’t think about the screams)  _ would fritz it out? She hasn’t done anything besides read under her desk in science class in years!

Ha. If only her physics teacher could see her now.

MJ grimaces as she feels something wet dribbling down her temple. She pokes cautiously at her forehead until her fingers brush over a gash; they come away sticky and red with a concerning amount of blood. What was it she read once? Head wounds bleed a lot? (Shit, maybe she really should try this whole paying-attention-in-class thing.)

She wipes away the blood threatening to drip into her eye as she surveys the room. She spots Cat-Man sprawled unconscious in the corner covered in his own numerous wounds. She’d be lying if she said she felt bad for him, especially considering the throbbing pain in her wrist where he’d grabbed it. It’s a shame, because black and blue really aren’t her colors.

It’s just as she’s determined that there’s nothing else of even remote interest here that she hears it:  _ crack.  _ The noise is soft, nearly inaudible yet unmistakable nonetheless. Huh. Guess the explosion was more powerful than she thought.

“MJ!”

She whips around at the sound of her name to find Peter crawling through the literal hole in the wall she’d somehow managed to create. She’s relieved for all of two heartbeats before she recognizes that oh,  _ there’s a giant hole in the wall. _

“The whole place is coming down,” Peter confirms. “We have to get out of here.”

He holds out his hand, then bursts into a sprint—at least, the non-enhanced human version of one—the seconds she takes it. His palm is sweaty in hers, and she smells burnt flesh with a nauseating clarity.

“Flash is outside,” Peter says. “At least, he should be.”

MJ hopes for all of their sakes that he’s right, because they really don’t have time for Peter to play hero at the moment.

She frankly has no idea how he manages to navigate them, yet soon enough Peter is tugging her up a set of stairs and into the waiting outdoors.

(She isn’t one for all the sappy nature bullshit, but she can sort of see now why all those crusty white dudes were so obsessed with waxing poetic about it.)

The sun feels heavenly on her skin, and she tilts her head up to bask in it. Not even Flash’s annoying voice as he rambles about Iron Man being on his way can ruin this for her.

Peter deciding to go back on his self-sacrificing bullshit, on the other hand, most definitely can.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she snaps as Peter stumbles towards the building they  _ literally just escaped from. _

“There are people still down there! I can’t leave them to die.”

MJ clenches her jaw. “The hell you can’t, Parker.”

“And don’t you  _ dare  _ try to give me that crap about it being your responsibility,” she adds on when she notices Peter opening his mouth to argue.

“But—“

“She’s right.” 

For being the words MJ thought she’d never have the privilege of hearing, Flash’s response is strangely underwhelming. (It probably has something to do with the anxiety tearing her insides apart.)

“You’re hurt,” she says. “ _ I’m  _ hurt.” She can hear Peter swallow, see the tension working its way through his jaw. “I need you here.”

She doesn’t add that she knows what happened in that warehouse last year from pieced-together evidence in the form of whispered nightmares and offhand, incredibly concerning comments. Keeping Peter from enduring even more trauma is her own private burden to bear.

Apparently, her concerns still aren’t enough, and she watches with mounting horror as Peter shakily closes the rest of the gap between him and the door.

“Peter!” she shouts, urging her aching body towards him.

She’s slow, too slow, and each step on what’s probably a sprained ankle sends a jolt of pain up her leg. Her knee buckles and she falls to the ground with a groan, the grass beneath her doing little to cushion the strain on her laundry list of injuries. She digs her fingers into the dirt; if she has to crawl her way to stop her boyfriend from doing something dangerously stupid, so be it.

Flash beats her to the punch.

“Get off,” Peter grunts as Flash grabs him.

By all means, Peter should be able to dislodge the grip on his bicep with laughable ease. But he’s injured in a whole host of ways, electrocuted and starved and beaten and pumped full of drugs. Hell, she doesn’t even know the last time he properly slept.

Flash doesn’t let go. He just grits his teeth and pulls Peter backwards.

Peter  _ screams. _

“Fuck!” Flash yelps, withdrawing his hand as though burned. “Fuck, I’m sorry!”

Peter doesn’t reply as he gingerly cradles his freed arm. He bites his lip.

MJ knows what he’s about to do the second before he does it.

“Don’t you dare—“

The sickening  _ pop _ —the muffled yell behind clenched teeth—comes before she can stop it.

“It’s fine,” Peter says with a poor attempt at sounding casual. “Nothing I haven’t done before. Now get out of my way!”

He only makes it a few steps towards the door before the building collapses.

“No,” he whispers, staring at what was once the entryway. “No!”

His face screams pure devastation; and while MJ personally thinks getting crushed is an incredibly fitting end for the bastards now buried beneath the concrete, she knows that what Peter needs right now is comfort.

He’s sunken to his knees by the time MJ reaches him, and she places a gentle hand on his non-formerly-dislocated shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You did the best you could.”

“I should’ve been better. It’s my fault.”

His voice is thick with tears, and MJ gives him a sympathetic squeeze.

“Did you make them kidnap us?”

“No, but—“

“Did you make them torture you?”

“MJ…”

“The answer is no. You rescued us, and you kept Morgan safe.”

“Uh,” Flash interjects, as though she isn’t in the middle of the complex operation that is reasoning her way around Peter’s massive guilt complex. “Who’s Morgan?”

“That’s classified information, Eugene.”

MJ has never been so relieved to hear Tony Stark’s voice in her entire life. (Granted, she can’t remember a time she was anything other than irritated to hear him, so the bar is pretty low.)

“Holy shit,” Flash says. “You’re Iron Man.”

She glances over at Flash—his expression will be some great sketching fodder—only to see that he’s still wearing the Spider-Man mask. No, not just the mask; the mask and  _ MJ’s sweater. _

For some reason, it’s the funniest goddamn thing MJ’s ever seen.

Stark, now with his suit retracted, stares at her like she’s gone insane. She’d stare right back (and win the ensuing contest) because that man basically wrote the rulebook on losing one’s mind. Her determination of the guide’s subtitle—the consequences of toxic masculinity, alcohilism and warmongering—is less applicable, but it’s amusing nonetheless.

“I can’t believe you’re still wearing that,” she gets out between giggles.

“What?” Flash says defensively. “It’s so cool!”

Even Peter snorts at this, which MJ counts as a win. Then he tilts his head and, after a moment, bursts into all-out laughter. MJ thinks it’s absolutely gorgeous.

“I can’t believe you told Karen to call you Spider-Man,” he wheezes.

“It’s part of the experience!”

MJ is straight-up cackling at this point, abdomen heaving with each peal of laughter until the tightening in her chest turns into sobs. It’s suddenly too much, all of this, and she’s exhausted in a way she doubts sleep can fix. The pressure that’s been choking her for days has been replaced by a strangely foreign freedom, a crushing weight lifted only to leave a bone-deep weariness in its wake.

Peter’s arms are warm as he wraps them around her, and she can feel the wetness of his own silent tears on her collarbone. They hold each other for a minute before breaking apart, though they keep their hands interlocked. Flash and Stark are doing a piss-poor job of pretending not to watch them. They even try to act surprised when MJ clears her throat and tells them to turn around.

She’d call them out on it if she wasn’t so fucking tired. (Well, that and Stark’s status as their ride home.)

“Happy’s a few minutes out,” Stark says with a glance at his watch. It’s some gross hybrid between a Rolex and a fancy gadget, and MJ makes a mental note to ream him for it later. 

“Hey, Underoos.” Stark snaps his fingers at Peter, who’s begun to sag into MJ’s side. “Can you stand?”

She feels Peter shift weakly against her, and slings an arm over his neck to keep him in place. “He’s not moving until he has to.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were the adult here,” Stark replies sarcastically.

“I’m the one who fixed your stupid tech in the first place,” she retorts. “And the one who’s spent the last few days making sure Peter didn’t get himself killed while protecting  _ your  _ daughter.”

Stark scowls but remains quiet. It’s a good decision, which is a real rarity on his part.

Flash takes the terse silence as an opportunity to ask every Avengers-related question he can come up with. It’s clearly annoying the shit out of Stark. MJ thinks it’s hilarious.

He pauses when Happy pulls up in some weird sort of all-terrain sports car, and MJ chooses not to question it because  _ god  _ she just wants to get out of here. She helps maneuver Peter to the surprisingly spacious backseat before climbing in after him. Flash slides in beside her, then proceeds to repeatedly elbow her as he fiddles with the seatbelt. MJ makes sure to jostle him back as she buckles Peter and herself in.

Stark takes shotgun—no doubt to avoid more fanboying from a certain overzealous passenger—but leaves the divider open. He really should take a note out of Happy’s book, because this is all Flash needs to launch into another barrage of questions.

“Slow down there,” he says. “I’m taking you guys back to the compound to get checked out.”

“So you’re kidnapping us,” MJ deadpans.

_ “No,”  _ Stark replies with thinly veiled annoyance. “I’m  _ rescuing you  _ from being kidnapped and offering you free health services.”

MJ tamps down the part of her that  _ really  _ wants to bicker because, well, they kind of  _ do  _ need some medical attention; the main priority, of course, is Peter, who passed out as soon as the car rumbled to life, but MJ won’t say no to avoiding hospital bills.

She realizes, belatedly, that she should probably let her parents know she’s alive. Except…

“You owe me a new phone.”

Stark turns to look at her. “Excuse me?”

“A new phone,” she repeats. “Mine got crushed.”

“Sure, kid. Whatever you want.”

She bristles at how dismissive he sounds, and has every intention of snapping right back at him, but…

But her boyfriend is warm against her side, and the vehicle is rocking ever so gently, and there may still be metal cuffs on Peter’s wrists but he’s so wonderfully  _ alive,  _ and they’re finally,  _ finally  _ safe.

She leans her head to rest on Peter’s shoulder and welcomes the embrace of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe one day..i will learn how to write endings
> 
> thanks to everyone who stuck with me on this. hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos fuel me pls i crave validation


End file.
